


linger on (your pale blue eyes)

by coastalwaters



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Archie Andrews Needs a Hug, Betty Cooper Deserves Better, Betty Cooper is a Good Friend, Betty Cooper is not perfect, Childhood Friends, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, SO MUCH FLUFF, Sappy, Some Swearing, barchie, canon compliant (sort of), let these kids heal from their trauma please, pining! Archie (sort of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 16:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16875864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coastalwaters/pseuds/coastalwaters
Summary: "He lets his gaze trace over her figure, bathed in hazy golden light. He breathes out a slight laugh when he remebers how she looked the first day he met her, bathed in that same sunlight, beautiful and clean. Angelic. Even through all the shit they’ve had to deal with, Betty Cooper is still an angel in his eyes."-or-snapshots of Archie growing up, and learning to love all of Betty Cooper, not just the perfect parts.





	linger on (your pale blue eyes)

**Author's Note:**

> this is my very first pic please be gentle with me, I am but a child

Secretly, Archie thinks that maybe he was in love with Betty Cooper from the first moment he saw her. With her tidy pink dress, and white satin ribbon shining atop her golden curls, and her big blue eyes, Betty Cooper was the closest thing Archie had ever seen to a real-life angel. As she stood there in the sunlight, like the sky was smiling down on her, Archie thought maybe that’s what his grandma meant when she talked about “God’s grace”. Archie doesn’t really understand who or what God is, he’s not even sure God is real because the thought of some random guy up in the sky and surrounding the universe and controlling his life doesn’t make sense to Archie. He wants to make his own decisions. But, he thinks, maybe God or the universe _is_ real because he’s never seen anything as perfect as Betty Cooper. Maybe God sent him an angel.

 

“I’m E-liza-beth,” she enunciates through her slightly gap-toothed smile, later that day when they are sat next to each other by Ms. Paffrey. “But my friends call me Betty. You can call me Betty.”

 

Archie grins, and he feels something flutter in his tiny body. He likes that he can call her Betty. _Bet-ee C-oop-er,_ he sings in his head, my friend _Bet-ee C-oop-e-r-r-r._

 

“I’m Archie. My real name is Ar-chi-bald,” he struggles through the pronunciation. “But that’s a yucky name, so I’m just Archie.”

 

“I like your name, Ar-chi-bald,” she giggles. “Like Uncle Steve! He’s bald.”

 

Archie frowns.

 

“But I’m not bald,” he insists. “So you can’t call me Archi- _bald._ ”

 

She giggles again, and he can’t really be mad because she looks so happy and he kind of wants to hear her laugh again. ( _Is that what angels sound like when they sing?_ )

 

“I know! Your hair is very red, Archie,” she responds, stretching out the “e” at the end of his nickname. “I like your hair. It’s like a fire truck!”

 

“I like your hair, too. It’s like sunshine.”

* * *

 

When Archie is 8 and Betty is seven-and-8-months, they get placed in different classes for the first time. They hug each other on the last day of summer and Betty cries a little, just soft tiny sounds.

 

“We’ll see each other at lunch Betts! Don’t worry. We’ll still be best friends,” Archie assures her.

 

“I know,” Betty sniffles. “I just wish we could spend all day together, like we used to.”

 

Archie grips her body a little tighter and buries his face in her soft, golden curls. She smells like vanilla shampoo. He doesn’t want to be separated either. But mostly, he never wants Betty to cry, so he tells himself to stay strong, even if he’s crying a little on the inside.

 

“Best friends forever?” she pulls back and locks his gaze with her watery, cornflower blue eyes, holding out her pinky. He grins and locks his pinky into hers. She starts to smile a little bit, and his heart sings.

 

“Forever.”

* * *

 

Archie breaks his leg when he’s 10, and Betty is there to help carry his backpack and all his books. And even though she laughs at him when she sees him struggling up the stairs on his slighlty over-sized crutches, he can forgive her because, of course, she is also there to hold his hands as he abandons the crutches all together and decides to hop up the stairs. (Also, her smile lights up the cool tones of his staircase and somehow makes his leg hurt a little less).

 

At 12, Archie’s mom moves away for good and Betty runs downstairs through her house and all the way up to Archie’s room the minute she spots his tearstained cheeks through the window. He cries for hours on Betty’s shoulder and into her hair and on her stomach, staining the gentle blue fabric of her sweater until they finally fall asleep tangled in the pillows and sheets of his bed, which he had torn apart earlier.

 

At 13-but-close-enough-to-14-that-you-just-say-you’re-14, Betty is taller than Archie, _but only by an inch and three quarters!,_ and he’s kind of starting to notice just how pretty his best friend is. It’s not really until Chuck, who has already gone through what Archie supposes is the entirety of puberty, asks Archie if he and Betty are dating because Betty is apparently “kind of hot, in a sexy girl-next-door kind of way”. Archie can’t help but laugh. Betty Cooper, perfection personified, with her golden hair, and shiny eyes, and soft skin, gentle touches, and smiles like the sunrise, who helps him with his homework, who he shares his deepest secret with is not his _girlfriend._ She’s so much more than that, she’s his _best friend._ Girlfriends are for crushes and making out with and (maybe) having sex with. Best friends are for adventures and secrets and laughing and holding you when you cry. He tells Chuck this.

 

“You’re a fucking idiot, Ginger,” Chuck scoffs and walks away, towards Josie. Archie is a little taken aback, but Chuck is pretty fucking weird in his personal opinion, so Archie doesn’t pay too much mind to his comment.

 

Betty finds him later and grins brightly before dragging him to Biology class as he grumbles about not knowing anything besides the “mitochondira is the powerhouse of the cell”. When she laughs and her ponytail swings, brushing against the gentle slope of her shoulders, Archie is struck suddenly with Chuck’s words from earlier. He’s always known Betty was beautiful, objectively, but in that moment, for the first time, Archie realizes that he- that-

 

He doesn’t know exactly what it is he’s feeling when he looks at Betty, but it’s the first time he remebers consciously thinking _Betty Cooper is stunning._ It’s also the first time he kind of wonders what she would do if he reached out and pressed his lips to hers. But, _god,_ he reminds himself, this is his best friend, his Betty Cooper, his person, not his girlfriend, not the one he gets to kiss. Betty is the most perfect thing he has in his life - he’s not gonna ruin that on a whim.

* * *

 

By 16, Archie is fucking his music teacher, his body newly tall and lean and muscular as he moves over Ms. Grundy, licking a path down her neck as she sighs, tugging into his ginger locks. And he knows it’s wrong. He _knows_ that Ms. Grundy is an adult and he’s… not, but she makes him feel like he’s not just a lost little kid, like he has some semblence of control over his life. If he can bang an adult when he’s still a teenager, then _fuck_ he can handle the rest of his life, right?

 

“Arch-ee,” Geraldine keens, letting the “e” linger on her lips. It reminds him, oddly, of the first day he met Betty and the way she sang his name, and he swallows the syllable from Grundy’s mouth with his own.

 

This is the first time Archie has ever really kept a secret from Betty. But he doesn’t want to see the disappointment on her face, the tears in her eyes when he tells her that he’s sleeping with a fucking teacher. He doesn’t want to touch perfect Betty with his moral fuck ups. And later, when she is standing outside her house, tears shimmering in her eyes under the moonlight, asking him whether he loves her, in _that_ way (looking like an angel with clipped wings) that’s what he tells her. That he can’t love her in that way, because she is _perfect_ and he is decidedly _not._ And when her face crumples at those word and she turns back towards the door, he knows that he’s right - all he seems to be able to do lately is make Betty sad, and he never wants to see her cry. _Fucking up again._ And he knows that if he let himself love her in _that_ way, the way that makes his blood sing, (the way that maybe he already does), he will only bring her down, tarnish her. Betty needs someone smart, who knows the right things to say to comfort her when she cries, someone who can match the goodness of her heart with their own, someone who would never break her heart. That is not Archie.

 

So when Archie first sees Betty wrapped up in Jughead’s arms, smiling a private little smile and her eyes shining at the boy from the wrong side of the tracks, he is confused. But the more he thinks about it, the more it makes sense, because Jughead is probably the second-smartest person he knows (just behind Betty, of course) and underneath all the layers of angst and scathing sarcasm, he is also kind, gentle, loyal, and so _good._ And so Archie smiles and tells himself that this, Betty and Jughead, his two best childhood friends, falling in love, is _good._ Most of all, he knows this can be good, because Jug makes Betty smile in a way Archie has never seen before.

* * *

 

Sometime in the winter, after Valerie, when Geraldine is gone and forgotten, Archie loops his arm over Veronica’s shoulders, and she grins that sly little grin of hers and reaches up to capture his mouth in hers.

 

“I love you, Archiekins,” she whispers against his lips, and his eyes leave the girl next door where she stands in the near distance, speaking lowly to her beau, and focus on the dark ones in front of him.

 

Veronica does not remind him of softness - she is hard edges, smirks, the clicking heel of her stillettos in the hall, the feeling of her body slick against his, tangled in satin sheets. He thinks maybe, he could love her too.

* * *

 

16 is also the year his life goes to absolute shit. Beyond having to save his friends and the drama of his interpersonal relationships, Archie’s dad is dying.

 

Fred Andrews is lying in a hospital bed while surgeons poke and prod his body, searching for a bullet, and Archie is sitting in the hallway, his letterman stained red with his father’s blood and he thinks he might stop breathing. He pictures his dad shuddering in his dying breaths, plugged into machines, and tears begin slipping down his face, creating little rivers of salt between splatters of blood and sweat staining his skin. He feels like a little boy; he wants to curl up on his father’s lap. (He wants someone to hold his hand).

 

And suddenly his friends are there, Jug, and Ronnie, and Betty, flying through the doors and down the hallway and his body remembers how to breathe.

 

In the darkness of the very early morning, when he can’t sleep, Betty is there, in his room, on his bed, holding him like she did when they were 12 and his mom left. He doesn’t know why she’s awake at this hour, or how she knew he needed her, but she’s _there_ , like always. She runs her fingers through his hair, stroking down the side of his face, her other arm tight around his shaking shoulders. His head is buried against her neck and he chokes on his own oxygen into her collarbone, clutching her torso like a lifeline.

 

“It’s okay, Archie. I’ve got you. Everything’s gonna be okay,” she whispers into the darkness, and he holds her tighter. He wants to fold his body into hers, to live insider her, so she can hold him forever. She is his anchor, in this moment, and in all moments.

 

“I’m here, Arch. I’ll always be here.”

* * *

 

Betty kisses him in the car, one night. He’s telling her he needs her, because he does - he needs her every second of everyday, he needs his best friend, his angel.

 

She overwhelms his senses, her vanilla scent that has lingered on her since childhood, and for a moment he forgets that Betty Cooper is perfect. When her lips meet his, she feels so _human._ So soft and breakable and brave and sad under his touch. She doesn’t feel like marble or like clouds or like heaven or anything ethereal that he has always dreamed her to be. And then he is sad. Because beautiful, perfect Betty Cooper should not be kissing him and he should not be kissing her back. They do not belong to one another.

 

She pulls back, and there is a question in her eyes he does not want to answer.

 

Later that night, the man with a gun and a black hood nearly forces her to bury him alive, and he’s ready. He would lay down in the dirt and suffocate for Betty. And when he locks eyes with her, both of them terrified and exhausted, aching bodies and souls, he thinks maybe the question has already been answered.

* * *

 

Then, it is Betty’s life that is going to shit. She spends the entire day with Jug when Hal is arrested, and Archie doesn’t know where they are or what they are doing, but the fire that has burning in his blood, the need for revenge that has driven his existence since his father got shot is just… gone. And in its place is this hole, where the rose-colored image of his life - happy, sane parents, functioning families, logic, (Hal hugging Betty as he dropped her off for school, Hal inviting him over for dinner, Hal showing him the Cooper photo albums) - used to sit. He stares at Betty’s window all day.

 

He wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of something shattering outside, and he leaps out of bed snatching his baseball bat and whipping his head towards the window. And there’s Betty Cooper, half-hanging out of her window, curls limp over her face, staring down at a shattered picture frame on the concrete in the alley between their houses. And Archie runs out the door and into the night, skin tingling in the cool air; he runs until he is through the Cooper door and up the stairs, into Betty’s room, and all the way to the window, where he catches her shaking frame in his grasp, pulling her into his chest.

 

He tries to hug her hard enough to imbue all his strength into her. He wants to cry because Betty Cooper, his best friend, does not deserve for her father to be a serial killer, she does not deserve the life that has been given to her, because Betty is perfect. Betty deserves endless joy and summer days and peaceful nights and unconditional, undeniable love from everyone around her. But here she is, crushed by the weight of revelations in the past few hours, and it makes him so damn _sad_ and _angry,_ so Archie starts to cry too.

 

“Archie,” she breathes out inbetween sobs. She makes a few more noises but seems unable to speak beyond his name.

 

“I’m here,” he whispers fiercely into her halo of hair. He grips her face, needing her to understand, the tears streaming down her puffy cheeks mirrored on his own. “I’m here, Betty. I will _always_ be here. You’ll get through this. We’ll get through this together.”

 

He cries as he lifts her up into his arms and sits her down atop him, his hands moving through her hair, pushing it away from her face. He cries for her, and lets her grip his forearms so hard that her nails leave tiny crescent moons of blood on his skin. He lets her scream herself hoarse into the crook between his neck and his shoulder, he lets her lay catatonic and limp against him while he rubs soothing shapes between her shoulder blades and at the bottom of her spine, and hums her a gentle melody.

 

He cries when she finally falls asleep, breath tickling his collarbone, because he never wants to see this girl he loves get hurt. He cries because people are dead. Because his neighbor killed them. Because he thinks this might kill his best friend. Because he is powerless to stop it.  

* * *

 

By junior year, they no longer have to deal with serial killers and murder mysteries, but life doesn’t seem to be any easier. Betty rarely speaks and smiles even less. Most days he catches Jug sighing and pulling her into a hug she does not reciprocate and kissing her temple before the first bell rings. (His heart aches).

 

Archie walks with her to their first class, like they did when they were kids. Sometimes she greets him with a quiet “Hey, Arch.” Sometimes she smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. Sometimes she doesn’t acknowledge that he is even there. But he is. Always.

 

He tells her about football practice and his dad; he puts an earbud in her ear and lets her listen to his latest song. She is always the first person to hear them. Sometimes he has to brush her hair away from her face to put the earbud in. She never wears her hair up anymore.

* * *

 

Hell breaks loose the summer before they leave for college. Archie is headed to USC, and Betty is going to study journalism at Northwestern. It’s the first time they’ll really be apart since they’ve known each other.

 

Archie lies on Betty’s carefully made bed, strumming random chords on his acoustic, while Betty journals silently at her desk. Her half-packed room is stifling in the July heat, even with the window cracked and fan spinning madly above their heads. He turns his head lazily to gaze at his best friend. She’s doing a little better these days - she occasionally smiles with her teeth and eyes, she teases him lightly on good days, and she will kiss Jug fully again. She tells him about therapy sometimes, and other times they just sit together and cry. He lets his gaze trace over her figure, bathed in hazy golden light. He breathes out a slight laugh when he remebers how she looked the first day he met her, bathed in that same sunlight, beautiful and clean. _Angelic._ Even through all the shit they’ve had to deal with, Betty Cooper is still an angel in his eyes. His gaze traces down the curve of her arm to where her hand is resting gently on her desk.

 

He doesn’t know how he missed it before but it looks like there are...scabs on her palm.

 

“Betts?” he asks quietly, voice rough from the heat. He reaches his hand out towards her.

 

“Hmm?” she doesn’t look up from her writing.

 

He sets his guitar down and sits up before closing the short distance between them. He gently reaches for her hand lifting it up for a closer look. That’s when she startles into action, snatching her hand out of his grasp and drawing it protectively towards her chest.

 

“ _Jesus,_ Arch! What the hell are you doing?”

 

He’s startled by her sudden outburst. His surprise quickly turns into anger and trepidation as he registers her defensive posture. She clutches her hand even closer to her chest.

 

“Betts, why are there scabs on your palm?”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

“Betty, you’ve been my best friend since forever. I can tell when you’re lying. Now show me your hand.”

 

He stretches his arm towards her and she scoffs out an incredulous laugh.

 

“It’s none of your business, Archie!”

 

Her eyes are so full of sorrow and anger and he is so tired of the secrets that have arisen between them since sophomore year when all this shit started. They breath together for a second, her intakes quick and short, his angry and drawn out. And then he lungs for her clenched fist. She shouts at him and tries to pull back, but his grip is much stronger than hers, and he doesn’t want to hurt her, he _never_ wants to hurt her, but here she is hurting herself, and when he sees the fresh blood trickling out of her palm he clenches down harder. She swears and shoves back against his chest. He is too shocked to hold on.

 

“Betty,” his voice tremors as he speaks, barely above a whisper. “What-wh,” he feels like he can’t breathe. “Betty, what are you doing to yourself?”

 

Her eyes shine with unshed tears as her jaw trembles slightly. She opens her mouth but then she just laughs in a way that makes his chest twist awfully.

 

“Forget it, Archie. You wouldn’t understand.”

 

“I-Betty! Whatever it is, you can tell me! I’ll understand, _god_ , you’re my best friend, I can fix -” he’s pleading with her at this point, hands reaching for her forearms. He just wants to stop her bleeding. He doesn’t want to see her bloody and torn. Angels shouldn’t look that way. (Perfection doesn’t bleed).

 

“You can’t fix this, Arch!” She screams at him, covering her eyes with her hands. Streaks of red are left behind on her right cheekbone when she pulls her palms away. “You can’t -you-”

 

She huffs out another broken laugh.

 

“You’re part of the damn problem, Archie!”

 

His breath does stop this time, catching in his throat, and he chokes on it. He doen’t manage to get a word out before she launches into a full out screaming match.

 

“I’m not- I’m not fucking _perfect_ , Archie! I’m so-” she sobs through her words. “I am so _fucked up,_ Archie! I can’t breathe in this place, with you, with my mom, with- with everyone! I can’t breathe because if I breathe I will _scream,_ but Betty Cooper, perfect little Betty Cooper can’t scream. If Betty Cooper screams the entire fucking world would fall apart. _Your_ world would fall apart!”

 

Her hair is flying around her face and her skin is flushed in an anxious red, sweat tracking down the side of her face.

 

“And this,” she holds up her bloody hand in front of his face. He wants to cry. “This is how you maintain perfection.”

 

She suddenly reaches for a drawer and visciously yanks it open, pulling out an orange pill bottle. She uncaps it and tosses the contents in his direction, tiny little pills bouncing off his chest and landing on the floor.

 

“Oh, and this too! Can’t forget about the pills! Can’t forget to take my _fucking Adderall_! Archie, this town, this life, the fucking pedastal you’ve put me on for my entire life is _killing me!_ ” She’s crying now and he thinks maybe he is too.

 

“I’m dying, Arch! I can’t- I can’t do it anymore! I can't be _perfect_ _!_ ” And then quieter, broken. “It’s _killing me._ ”

 

She collapses down to the floor, kneeling between the little white pills, bloody palms staining her soft pink sweater. (The angel is dead, and in her place is just a girl).

 

Silence stretches between them, the air humming angrily. Blood is burning in his ear and cheeks and fingertips; he is suffocating. His heart feels like it’s being ripped out of his chest, tossed to the floor with a broken girl and a bottle of pills. After what feels like hours, Archie sinks down next to her and tentatively reaches for her hand. He interlaces their fingers and lets her blood stain his own palms.

* * *

 

In August, Archie’s chest feels a little less broken (he can take a shallow breath here and there), and Betty’s scabs have begun to fade into scars. She and Jughead break things off amicably, neither wanting to deal with a long distance relationship. Besides, Jug tells him later, he thinks he might be asexual. Archie’s not 100% sure exactly what that means, but from the brief description Jug gives him, he’s not particularly shocked. Jug tells him he loves Betty and always will, but in a platonic way. Archie thinks he gets it.

 

He and Ronnie had split romantic ways during the school year.

 

“Oh, Archiekins,” she had grinned, placing a kiss on his cheek. “I think maybe we were both caught up in the mystery of each other. You are one of my best friends, and always will be, but I’ve never been _it_ for you.”

 

She had giggled at his confusion.

 

“You’re lucky you’re pretty and charming, ‘cause you can be a real fucking idiot, Ginger.”

 

She had touched his face one last time and smiled up at him.

 

“Don’t worry. You’ll figure it out someday,” she had patted his cheek and then linked her arm through his. “So, let’s go to Pop’s, I’m seriously craving a burger right now.”

* * *

 

He spends the last days of summer sitting in a booth at Pop’s with his best friends in the entire world. He chuckles as Jug and Ronnie engage in a french fry war across the table from him, Ronnie snatching Jug’s signature cap and holding it ransom until he shares his honey mustard sauce with her. Betty is laughing, her shoulders gently shaking as she watches them from beside him, pink lips wrapped around her straw.

 

Archie’s chest feels warm as he gazes at his chosen family. He reaches for Betty’s hand under the table and traces his fingers over her scars. She looks up at him, with a soft, private smile, like he is the only other person in this room. The dying light of a summer sunset streams in through the window, painting her in dusky rose and gold.

 

When he looks at her, he does not see an angel. He does not see perfection. He sees his best friend, with the scars on her palm and on her heart, he sees her pale blue eyes, a little sad and a little mischevious. He sees Betty Cooper.

 

She is the most beautiful thing in the universe.

* * *

 

(And when he’s 22, graduated with a degree in music, not sure what he’s doing with his life, living at home and helping his dad with construction, he seizes Betty and kisses her like a starving man when she comes to visit him one day at the site. She grins shyly when he pulls away, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear, peering up at him through her dark lashes. _God,_ he fucking _loves_ this girl. He’s in love with Betty Cooper. She bites her lip and presents him with a shake from Pop’s. Before he can get his mouth around the straw, suddenly there she is again, in his arms, kissing him with fervor, laughing against his mouth.

 

“What took you so long, Archibald?” she gasps, giggling as he chases after her chocolate flavored lips.

 

She tastes like sunshine.)

_Fin_

  


**Author's Note:**

> Thought of you as my mountain top  
> Thought of you as my peak  
> Thought of you as everything  
> I've had but couldn't keep  
> I've had but couldn't keep
> 
> Linger on  
> Your pale blue eyes  
> \- Pale Blue Eyes, the Velvet Underground


End file.
